A Michael Broad Blog
It is claimed in a series of studies around 2015 that declawing did not alter the behaviour of domestic cats. In fact, the operation pleased the owners and it helped to prevent the abandonment of those cats to shelters. I would like to quote a few of those studies and then discuss the results. …
A cat has no concept of its own death and so it cannot anticipate it, no matter how ill it feels. – Dr Desmond Morris If an old domestic cat left to their own devices falls ill, they don’t think that they are dying. They feel pain and discomfort and what it means …
Frankly, the question in the title irritates me, which is why I am writing about it. It is a question asked on social media (quora.com). The person should not be asking the question in the first place because they are directing the question at people who are not veterinarians. They are seeking advice from …
My research indicates to me that osteoarthritis is underreported and underdiagnosed in domestic cats in America. That assessment probably applies to other countries because it is difficult to assess. It’s hard to assess in the consulting room because cats are frightened anyway, and they don’t behave normally so it is difficult to assess a …
Self-harm in cats is often a displacement activity. This is a complicated topic because even the experts don’t really have a handle on it and it often concerns mental health. In the same way that self-harming in people concerns mental health. I believe that there is a distinct overlap between self-harming in people and …
Yes, the mouse that your cat just killed felt pain and fear as animals have the same ability as humans to transmit nerve signals from the peripheral parts of the body to the brain to signal injury. Therefore, from a straightforward scientific point of view, looking at the anatomy, we have to conclude that …
A study first published May 23, 2017, entitled Pain and adverse behaviour in declawed cats, definitively concluded that 63% of the declawed cats in the study had bone fragments remaining in their toes. The bone fragments were present because the veterinarian who did the operation did it poorly. They did it too quickly and …
At the time this article was first published (2013) Onsior was a fairly new painkiller for pets. The active drug is robenacoxib. Before this drug became available in June 2012, a cat owner had little else to choose from when their cat was in need of drug therapy. You had Metacam, which has proven …
